Nguyen T.T.H.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads | Cui Y.J.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads | Tang A.M.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads | Herrier G.,LHOIST Recherche et Developpement | And 3 more authors.Unsaturated Soils: Research and Applications - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils, UNSAT 2014 | Year: 2014

Nguyen T.T.H.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads | Cui Y.J.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads | Herrier G.,LHOIST Recherche et Developpement | Tang A.M.,ParisTech National School of Bridges and Roads Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development - Proceedings of the XVI European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, ECSMGE 2015 | Year: 2015

Quicklime is a key component of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC), with typical quicklime contents of order 15 wt.% in Europe. It is the mostly used source of calcium oxide that eventually ends up as tobermorite in the final product. In this paper, we describe the research performed at Lhoist in order to assess the influence of quicklime on AAC. Several types of quicklimes were used, differing by their origin and reactivity. They were incorporated together with other fixed ingredients (cement, quartz,.) in several AAC recipes with final densities ranging from 350 to 550 kg/m3, corresponding to the European P2 - 0.35, P2 - 0.4 and P4 - 0.55 classes (EN 771-4). The study consisted first in following the green cake expansion of the different recipes. Then, the green cakes were autoclaved for 10 hours at 11 bars of steam pressure. The obtained AAC blocks were then tested for compressive strength and density. The study showed that quicklime reactivity had low effect on green cake penetration value. However, quicklime reactivity had a major effect on green cake expansion. Too reactive a quicklime generated a poor pore structure as detected by a fallback effect and a below-specification compressive strength of the low density AAC. Then, quicklime slaking curve was not sufficient to anticipate the green cake expansion for a given recipe. Quicklimes with similar reactivity but different origin could had very different behaviour in the AAC. Finally, the behaviour of the too-reactive quicklimes would probably have been easily corrected by decreasing the water temperature.
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